1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to audio signals and, in particular, to the acoustic identification of musical instruments the tones of which occur in the audio signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
When making usable widely used music databases for investigations, there is often the desire to determine which musical instrument a tone contained in an audio signal has been produced by. Thus, there might, for example, be the desire to search a music database to find out those pieces from the music database in which, for example, a trumpet or an alto saxophone occur.
Well-known methods for identifying musical instruments are based on frequency evaluations. Here, the different musical instruments are classified according to their overtones (harmonics) or according to their specific overtone spectra. Such a method can be found in B. Kostek, A. Czyzewski, “Representing Musical Instrument Sounds for Their Automatic Classification”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 49, No. 9, September 2001.
Methods for identifying musical instruments basing on a frequency representation to identify musical instruments have the disadvantage that many musical instruments cannot be identified since the characteristic spectrum generated by a musical instrument might be a “fingerprint” of a musical instrument which is of too little distinctiveness.